• Posted July 23, 2026

Many U.S. Schools Unprepared To Help Concussed Students Return To The Classroom

Many U.S. schools aren’t well prepared to help students who’ve suffered a concussion, a new study says.

A quarter of public schools have no concussion policy at all, and those with such a policy aren’t adequately training staff to help concussed children and teens, researchers reported recently in the Journal of School Nursing.

“That puts added pressure on school nurses to fill in the gaps, whether that’s educating colleagues, coordinating care, or ensuring students get the accommodations they need to recover and succeed,” lead researcher Kelly Sarmiento said in a news release. She’s director of outreach programs for the Brain Injury Association of America.

Concussion can cause headaches and affect a student’s concentration, balance, memory, mood and sleep. As a result, returning students to class following a concussion is a delicate process, researchers said.

"School nurses are absolutely central to concussion management in schools, and in many cases, they're carrying a significant share of that responsibility," Sarmiento said.

For the new study, researchers analyzed data from the 2024 School Pulse Panel, a survey of nearly 1,700 U.S. public school principals. Part of the survey asked about schools’ concussion policies.

Results showed that 75% of schools had a concussion policy during the 2023-2024 school year.

Of those schools, only 58% had policies that included information on how to accommodate and support students in the classroom as they recover from concussion.

Further, only 29% of schools with a policy required staff training on concussions.

"About 1 in 4 schools reported having no concussion policy at all, and even among those that do, fewer than a third require staff training,” Sarmiento said.

The study wasn’t designed to explain why schools aren’t adequately prepared to help students with a concussion, but senior researcher Dana Waltzman offered some theories.

“Previous research suggests several possible factors, including limited staffing and resources, lack of access to school health professionals such as full-time nurses or athletic trainers, competing priorities and challenges implementing policies consistently across schools," said Waltzman, an associate research professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Indiana University.

"We also found that schools in higher-poverty communities, schools with larger proportions of nonwhite students and smaller schools were less likely to report having concussion policies, which may point to resource and capacity differences,” she added in a news release.

The U.S. Disease Control and Prevention recommends that schools help students with a concussion by:

• Assigning people to monitor the student’s symptoms while at school

• Identifying the type and length of activities a child can handle, based on their condition

• Making short-term changes to their workload and schedule to help them get back to their regular routine

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on returning to school after a concussion.

SOURCES: Indiana University, news release, July 16, 2026; The Journal of School Nursing, July 16, 2026